D.A.R.Y.L. a.k.a. Barrett Oliver a.k.a. Bastian from The Neverending Story

Rog, I believe you are referring to the movie D.A.R.Y.L. Charming boy. Too bad he is an android. Rog, good to hear from you. I understand your confusion about the naming. I guess the guy that invented (or discovered) this particular class for parenting had the last name of Bradley. He bears little resemblance to our at times fuzzy Chicago friend. Being a liberal economically but not morally, I sometimes feel uncomfortable around people who live "alternative lifestyles"--meaning not necessarily homosexuality but women who just want a baby (not a "family") and so have a man as a sperm donor who is not going to be involved in a child's life (like that Ace of Base song "All that she wants") or another arrangement--because I come out so far on the conservative side that I seem unduly judgmental. I know that this sounds like a joke to many of my self-proclaimed conservative friends because they feel like we already are "granola," but being around truly granola people can be off-putting: you have to watch your step lest you wax too consumeristic. I guess I feared this birth class would be like that--people knitting their own diapers out of hemp, women interviewing guys to see who would be the best father (even if he wasn't the biological father), lots of dancing around and chanting how we were going back to the mothering source of life through the birth process--things like that. I was pleasantly surprised that everyone was simply concerned with how the mother was going to handle delivery given that most people are delivered by complete strangers in very businesslike hospitals. It's not that the miracle of birth is rare enough to have tons of trumpery in the moment, but it is still a tumultuous and celebratory thing. You'd like to have some time with mom and dad and baby getting to know each other before baby is whisked away to have shots and tests and measurements and rankings and all of the other "welcome to western society" things that happen to it right after birth. You'd like to have mom be as prepared as possible. You'd like to have dad more involved than simply sitting in the waiting room with a box of cigars. And that is how we ended up in a Bradley class. It was not a "male-bashing, emotion-touting, baby-blubbering parental class," as far as I can tell. On a completely unrelated note, 1000 blank white cards is a great game to play with creative and relatively non-sense-itive people. it was at least as fun as billed. as always, it was a joy to see joshua and zena and now abe in addition to mazzy. i can honestly report he is not an android. they were gracious enough to visit our attempt at messy church on sunday. just in case you're wondering, josh can now vouch for the fact that i am a mr. sensitive ponytail man, even if there were some of you who doubted that before. and to add to that, mr. cook insists that our kitchen-destroying labor over the weekend was akin to a church-experience for him. i know i was getting watery eyes and labored breathing...but that may have just been the asbestos fibers.